Centre for Financial Psychology and Systems

Two-Pots, One Eye

What Corporates Can Learn and Profit from the Psychology of Redemption

South Africa’s two-pot system achieved awareness but not restraint — SARS recorded over 2.6 million withdrawal applications by January 2025. Argues that employers’ education-only response is “one-eyed”, and that guilt, channelled through structured rebuilding pathways, is the behavioural lever they are leaving unused.

Designing a New Financial Self in the Age of AI

Explores how AI is reshaping the psychological foundations of financial identity — and what it means to consciously design a new financial self in conscious partnership with intelligent systems.

Breaking the Unholy Marriage Between Masculinity and Money

Why Male Billionaires May Need Financial Therapy the Most

Explores the psychopathology of billionaire financial behaviour and why extreme wealth accumulation may signal unresolved emotional patterns — making financial therapy most critical at the apex of power.

Retirement Planning as We Know it is a Lonely Pursuit of Capital, it Shouldn’t Be So

A call to reimagine retirement planning as a relational and communal pursuit rather than a solitary capital-accumulation race — centred on wellbeing and human connection, not portfolio size alone.

Robo-Advisors: Exploring and Leveraging the Competition

An in-depth exploration of algorithmic wealth management platforms, assessing competitive advantages and the cognitive shifts required by modern financial advisors navigating the FinTech landscape.

Legal Theory of Finance: Evidence from Global Financial Networks

Sarpong & Deodutt — DOI: 10.1080/23322039.2019.1593071

Analyses the intersection of law and global financial networks to understand how legal frameworks dictate market stability and structural behaviour — published open-access in Cogent Economics & Finance, 7:1.

In Building Optimal Portfolios, Do Not Ignore Investors’ Emotions

Challenges purely quantitative portfolio construction by proving the mathematical impact of unmanaged investor emotion — incorporating anxiety-adjusted returns, goals-based investing, and prospect theory.